Co-locating Traveler with other Domino applications

In general, running other Domino applications on the Traveler server isn't recommended, including mail, Sametime, SMTP, POP, and so forth. Maximum performance of the Traveler environment is best achieved on dedicated hardware whether it be virtual or physical. That said, there are some cases where you may want to investigate running Traveler along with other Domino services.

Small deployments of less than 100 users can often be set up on a single box that hosts both the mail and Traveler servers. In addition, in small deployments like this you can generally run services like Sametime, SMTP etc. For a small deployment it is still recommended to set up as an HA server with an enterprise database server handling the relational data management.

Large deployments with a large number of users and a large number of mail servers may want to investigate running Traveler on the mail server as a way to reduce cost of setting up a large number of independent Traveler environments. In this scenario you install Traveler on each mail server in a cluster, add one enterprise database server per mail cluster and add a load balancer or proxy server, thereby turning each mail cluster into a Traveler HA environment that can host the users on the particular mail cluster. Depending on the percentage of mail users who use mobile devices, you may be able to use a single enterprise database server to host more than one clustered mail environment. Thus, the cost of deployment is about one additional server per mail cluster, which often will be more cost effective than setting up a large number of Traveler HA servers. There are two important factors to review before setting up this type of environment however:
  • The mail servers must have sufficient processing capacity to handle 20-30% more load. In practice we have found only 20-30% of mail users generally use a mobile device to access their mail. As such, running Traveler on the mail server only increases the load about 20-30%. If a larger percentage of your mail user base use mobile devices to access their mail, then running Traveler on the mail servers may not be the correct solution.
  • Consider the type of mobile users in your environment. Not all mobile users are the same. If your mobile users tend to have large mail files and sync with unlimited mail filters, then running Traveler on the mail server may not be the correct solution for your deployment. See the topic Type of mobile user.